Maybe now that The Shins have debuted near the top of the Billboard charts, and graphic novels are being named to lists of the best literature of the year, the world doesn't need Seth Cohen anymore, but only four years ago, the validation of a mainstream TV show starring young pretty people meant quite a lot to people like Death Cab for Cutie and Brian Michael Bendis, big nerd-culture figures name-checked on the show. And at its best, The O.C. didn't just drop names of offbeat artistic figures—it was itself artistic in an offbeat way, from Seth's deadpan one-liners to his father's liberal crusades to the way that Seth's relationship with rich, pretty Summer subverted the traditional high-school drama pecking order.
Creator Josh Schwartz got a lot of deserved credit for adding crisp dialogue and a refreshing sense of self-awareness to the teen soap, but The O.C. had some alarming dips in quality rather quickly (the infamous Oliver arc near the end of the first season, for example) and Mischa Barton's Marissa was never anything but a whiny, poorly acted teen train wreck. My early enthusiasm for the show waned slowly over the first two seasons, and, like many others, I didn't return for the third. Many of the things that had made the show charming at first, including the self-conscious quirkiness and constant stream of meta-references, grew tired, and the soap opera antics only became more and more contrived.
It took the death of Marissa to get the show back on track, it seems, and in the current fourth season it's resurged in critical and fan acclaim, but the ratings have not done the same. I started watching again five or six episodes ago, and found enough of the old life and charm (helped greatly by two new characters—Taylor, played by Autumn Reeser, and Marissa's sister Kaitlin, played by Willa Holland) that I'm now sad to see it go; at least it's ending on a high note. I'd say it will be a while before another TV character expresses such love for comic books and Asian cinema, but thanks to The O.C., that might not be the case.